


The art of hate and forgiveness

by NightsMistress



Category: Star Stealing Prince
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:40:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28525629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: Snowe had inherited his parents' kingdom and that meant that he inherited everything his parents did. This includes those who were wronged by Lina and Edgar's absence as well as their presence.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The art of hate and forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to my betas, egelantier and morbane.

When Snowe was a child, Richard and Vera had read him stories of far-off lands, of princes and princesses fighting terrible monsters and returning home to their families once more. The princes and princesses were brave, dauntless, and rewarded by peace and safety. If his own journey had been like one of the stories he had read, his own journey would have ended with their little ship of refugees finding a place to live, and him living peacefully with Richard and Vera.

None of those stories ended with a rag soaked in a sickly-sweet fluid being shoved into his face from behind. Snowe fought against the hand that clapped the rag to his face like a vice, stumbling and struggling as he was pulled away from the main street and into an alley. To his horror, no one on the busy street came to his aid, even as he bit the fingers that covered his mouth and clawed at the person's wrist with flame-tipped fingers. The fight drained out of him with each forced step, until all he could do was lean dizzily against the person's forearm across his chest, blinking furiously against the black spots that threatened to swallow his vision. He found himself closing his eyes --

\-- and then opened them to darkness. It took him a moment to understand that the hot, stagnant feeling was because there was something over his head. A sack, he thought, based on the way that the rough fabric caught on the side of his jaw and cheek as he raised his head. His hands were tied behind his back, the top of a chair digging uncomfortably into his armpits. He was somewhere else, away from the hubbub of people on the main road, and all he could hear was his own breathing, harsh and unsteady, as he tried to work out what had happened to him.

He'd been kidnapped before, but that was by his parents. Being kidnapped by absolute strangers was a new and terrifying phenomenon. He swallowed, licked his lips, and cleared his throat to speak because surely he would not be left alone.

"Um … hello?" he called out tentatively. "Who's there?"

If he listened carefully, he could hear breathing. No one said anything, but he knew they were there. He could feel their attention on him, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He also knew there were people there because the demon knew, and wanted something in return from him for that knowledge. He swallowed again, feeling sweat trickle down his back.

"I don't know what's going on but I think you've got things all wrong," he went on. "If you let me go, I won't tell anyone – I mean, I can't, can I? I don't even know who you are."

"We know what you are," someone said. An older woman, Snowe thought. She sounded familiar in the way that she shaped her vowels. It was almost like how Richard and Vera talked, but not quite.

"You've got her eyes, you know," a man said, almost conversationally. No one ever commented on Snowe's eye color conversationally. Snowe's breath caught, because this was always the prelude to some terrible discovery. He thought he had known everything his parents had done, but it seemed that there was always more to find.

"I'm sorry for what my parents did to you," he said. "If there's anything I can do to make it right –"

He could hear movement, and then one of them grabbed his shoulder. He froze, uncertain as to what was happening. There was furious whispering overhead, and then he felt something being forced into his chest. A knife, he thought in panic, struggling futilely as it drove its way through his ribs. He couldn’t breathe around the blade, or the pain that it left in its wake. He sagged forward, curling around the wound as best he could with his hands tied behind the chair, and tried not to cry.

"All right, let's get out of here before someone comes looking for it," the woman said, dispassionate and cold.

"Kinda cheap, a demon sounding like a scared kid." The man sounded a little rattled.

"What, you feel sorry for it? Think of your wife and kids. They'll remember the last two decades once it's dead."

 _Oh,_ Snowe realized with agonizing clarity. _I know what my parents did to them._

Perhaps that was why his story didn't end with peace and safety. His parents were the monsters, and his quest was still undone. He still needed to be brave and dauntless, before he could win a happy ending for everyone in Sabine. He would need to restore what had been stolen from these two, at the very least.

Though, given that the pain had given way to a glassy, fragile distance as his shirt became warmer and wetter and he became colder and weaker, that would be hard. There was so much left undone, and his death would not bring back those twenty years of memories. He had to tell his parents' victims that. He had to find who their families were, and reunite them. And instead, he was sobbing for breath over a knife in his chest.

_How can I make everything right if I die here?_

"All you had to do was ask," the demon whispered in the back of his mind.

"What—?" Snowe said aloud, choking on blood. He then could say nothing more, because he was no longer in control of himself.

The rope tying his hands together snapped, and the demon pulled the sack off Snowe's head. The demon turned Snowe's head, and he swallowed dizzily as everything blurred. He couldn't make out anything, but that didn't seem to stop the demon from bringing Snowe's hand up and, with a fierce, delighted grin, snapping Snowe's fingers. Snowe didn't know what that was meant to do, until the air in the room ignited all at once, and extinguished just as quickly. The pressure from the resulting explosion knocked Snowe from the chair to the floor. The knife was driven further into his chest, grinding against his ribs, and Snowe gasped. He tried to reach for the knife, only for the demon to stop him.

"Don't be stupid," the demon said. He didn't sound like he was in pain. Maybe Snowe was the one who had to deal with it all. Still, the demon could only rise to their hands and knees to drag them out of the room, the knife pulling with each movement. Snowe didn't know how they got out of the room; he had closed his eyes while the demon was trying to untangle him from the chair and opened them again to cool, clean air and the robin’s-egg-blue sky overhead. He was lying on his back, trying not to breathe too deeply against the knife in his chest, and all he could do was blink slowly and hope that someone would come to his aid. Maybe they wouldn't.

"You really are stupid," the demon said with his voice. "You blew up a house. Of course they're going to come." Then, more gently, "Just go to sleep. We can't do anything right now."

The demon closed their eyes. Or Snowe did. It was hard to tell.

* * *

Snowe came back to himself in his room, chest neatly bandaged, head muzzy, and Erio climbing in through the window. He blinked at Erio, wondering if he was still dreaming. After all, while Erio didn't hate him as much as he had before, they were certainly not friendly enough that Erio would come to visit him late at night.

"Astra sent me," Erio said by way of explanation as he perched on the window. "She wants to know what happened.”

Snowe decided that this had to be real, because he doubted that his imagination could capture how abrupt Erio was in reality.

"What?" He moved his arm to rub at his face, only to stop when the pain cut through the soft detachment that clung to him.

Erio sighed. “Look, I know you’re loopy because of the potions Richard and Vera shoved down your throat. That’s why I’m being patient with you.”

“You are?” Snowe genuinely wondered.

“Yes. Because I was the one who found you, near an explosion, with a knife in your chest.” Erio looked at him and said, with meaning, “You should be dead.”

Snowe did not understand his meaning, though he could appreciate that this was probably because he had been stabbed as opposed to anything else being wrong with him. He was tired and dizzy, and wasn't sure he was ready to tiptoe through the minefield that was an angry Erio in his bedroom late at night. The worst was that he didn’t even know why Erio was angry.

"I - I didn't know you cared," he managed.

That was the wrong answer. Erio folded his arms and scowled.

"I don't," he said. "You want to get yourself killed, knock yourself out. But that’s not what happened. You let some thieves jump you --"

"They weren't thieves," Snowe interrupted.

Erio stared at him incredulously.

"So what?"

"They weren't thieves," Snowe said, because it mattered. "They had lived in Sabine once, but they were left behind when everyone fled. They're not dead, are they?"

"No. When I got there, you could smell the fire but nothing was burned. It was like you burned the air and nothing else." Erio was quiet, but Snowe could feel the tension simmering underneath that facade of control regardless. "I didn't know you could do that. Then I remembered – _you can't_."

"No," Snowe agreed miserably. He could heal, because he had wanted to learn, and he could burn almost anything he could see with fire because he had had to learn. But he didn’t have the level of control to do what Erio had described. Little wonder that was how Erio knew that it wasn't Snowe in control. Only a demon had a long enough lifespan to learn how to do that.

"And that's why I'm here, checking in on you," Erio said in the way one would speak to a child. It was condescending, but Snowe could appreciate why he was like that now. "Because when you don't take care of yourself, you put Astra in danger."

Snowe didn’t feel like he did when on his journey to restore the link. He was tired, but that wasn’t surprising given the circumstances. He had heard the demon’s voice for a little bit when he was dying, but he wasn’t dreaming of the demon, or of burning Astra. He didn’t remember dreaming anything at all.

"No, I’m fine,” he said. “I mean, I just was asleep, wasn't I?"

Erio stared at him for an incredulous moment.

"You were unconscious because all of your blood was on the outside," Erio said. "You should be dead."

It took Snowe a moment to realize that Erio was only slightly exaggerating. He pressed his hand against his chest. It hurt, but less than it should. Someone must have healed him, but not all the way. He'd healed and been healed enough on his journey to know how he should feel. This didn't feel like that. It felt like he'd just woken up from being attacked by Lorel.

"I should be dead," he echoed, feeling like he was falling and that he would shatter on impact.

"I just said that," Erio said, irritated. Then, his eyes widening as Snowe started to laugh, he added, "Oh, oh _no_."

It wasn't funny. Snowe knew it wasn't funny. And yet, it was funny that after everything that had happened, the one thing that had brought him some strange comfort was that eventually he would die and the demon would go with him. It was funny and awful to understand that he should be dead, should have been dead since Lorel tore him open, and that the only reason he was alive was so that one day he would kill his only friend.

Erio was staring at him and leaning out of the window as if he was about to throw himself backward to stop being in a room with him. Snowe swallowed down laughter, hiccoughing as he did so. It hurt. He needed that pain to ground himself once more.

"Are you done?" Erio said warily.

"I guess?" He put his hands over his mouth to stop an errant giggle from escaping. "I think so. I'm just … I'm just really tired, I think."

"I just said that too." Erio finally stepped into the room. He took Snowe's hands in his own. "Now go to sleep."

Snowe didn't tell him that the demon had said the same thing to him earlier. He didn't think Erio would find that comforting.

* * *

Snowe woke up mid-morning with Erio gone and the curtain swaying in the early morning breeze. That was for the best. He and Erio didn’t really like each other, not really, but Erio understood better than anyone else how much of a danger Snowe could be to someone else. If Erio had thought he was a danger, then he would have stayed, and Snowe was not a danger to Astra or anyone else. He would not allow himself to be a threat. Snowe would remain in control, and he would win a happy ending for the residents of Sabine including those he had not known were his subjects until they stabbed him.

For now though, he rested. It was all he could do.


End file.
